Friday, January 29, 2016

Winter is a good time to scan the coastal waterways of Brooklyn for a scarce "white-winged gull". Iceland and Glaucous Gulls are rare, but regular cold weather visitors to the borough of Kings. For today's photo I decided to mix it up a bit with a very oddly plumed gull that we found at Jamaica Bay back in 2004. While it would be easy to mistake this individual as one of the aforementioned, it actually turned out to be a leucistic Laughing Gull. Once nearly eliminated from New York, Laughing Gulls are now common breeding birds around the state. A chance meeting with Kenn Kaufman in the parking lot at JBWR shortly after spotting this bird helped clinch the identification.